


Come As You Are

by CatKing_Catkin



Series: Widomauk Week [3]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Consensual Mind Control, Costume Kink, Dancing Lessons, Dress Up, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Food, Friendship/Love, Future Fic, Illusions, Light Angst, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, POV Mollymauk Tealeaf, References to Sex, Talking, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-05
Updated: 2019-06-05
Packaged: 2020-04-08 07:19:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19102357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CatKing_Catkin/pseuds/CatKing_Catkin
Summary: (Written for Widomauk Week 2019, Day 3, prompt "formal event")"It wasn’t as if he liked fancy parties. But he liked being left out even less.Not that they’d done it maliciously – it had been a necessity, just a matter of how the magic users’ resources had shaken out."Or, the Mighty Nein get a job to infiltrate a fancy party and cause trouble for a troublesome duke, but doing so means that they don't have enough Polymorph spells to help Molly pass unnoticed and so Molly has to wait outside as a distraction. He tries to be okay with it. After all, sometimes jobs just shake out that way, and getting the job done is always the most important thing.But later, as the Mighty Nein celebrate their good fortune and their latest payday, Caleb finds a way for me and Molly to have some fun of their own, and for Molly to get a taste of a little of what he missed.





	Come As You Are

It wasn’t as if he _liked_ fancy parties. But he liked being left out even less.

Not that they’d done it maliciously – it had been a necessity, just a matter of how the magic users’ resources had shaken out. Normally Jester or Caleb could have polymorphed him into someone less distinct, just as they’d done for Beau, but the entire goal of this had been to both embarrass a minor duke and keep him from attending the talks that were happening during the ball. It had been decided that polymorphing him into a gerbil and locking him in a cupboard had been the best, least conspicuous way to do that. This, of course, meant that Jester or Caleb had needed to keep a polymorph spell held back. This, of course, meant that they'd had one less polymorph spell to use on Beau or Molly and Beau was the one who actually knew how to talk to fancy people without insulting them, even if she didn’t usually care to bother.

So Molly had been left as the odd one out, as the one to hover around the mansion gates ready to cause a distraction if Jester messaged him. But of course she wasn’t going to message him for that, this was a minor job with very little threat from the scattered, hired security. The biggest concern was keeping their faces from becoming known to the wider area and any more powerful friends this duke might have. Hence why everyone else was in disguise, and Molly was left to wait outside.

At least the moons were full and bright tonight. Molly hunkered down alone in the branches of a tree across the street from the house, but at least the eyes of his goddess were there, regarding him with the familiar benign warmth he had come to know and draw comfort from so many times before.

Sure enough, when he felt the familiar tickle of phantom breath against his ear, followed by Jester’s voice, it was only her reporting to him that the job was done, the meeting was over without their target’s presence, and they’d extended the polymorph spell by another hour just to be sure. They were all leaving one by one, and could he please meet them back at the inn? It only took two sending spells to convey as much, and once he was sure that a third wasn’t incoming, Molly slid soundlessly down from his hiding place and made his way back to his people, slipping soundlessly from shadow to shadow as he went.

The mood back at the inn was laid back and celebratory. It had been an easy job for easy gold, and there certainly weren’t many of those nowadays. Caleb and Nott were out collecting the payment from their client. The rest of the Nein were quick to welcome Molly back among them and quick to reassure him that he hadn’t missed anything interesting. And while he appreciated their efforts to cheer him up, that wasn’t _entirely_ the point, though he wasn’t about to ruin the mild high they were all riding from a job well done by mentioning as much.

Besides, then it turned out that they’d brought back gifts. Jester and Fjord each produced wrapped handkerchiefs from their bag containing bits and pieces of food they’d stolen from the party on his behalf. “Here’s some fancy cheese, and here’s this weird white fruit, and this tiny fish is probably still good…” Jester said, laying each piece delicately out on the handkerchief in front of him.

“Damned if I know what these mushrooms are stuffed with but it sure was tasty,” Fjord added, laying out his own spread.

“Grape leaves,” Beau said, from where she was kicked back on one of the beds. “Which was weird. Not my thing. Might be yours’, Molly.”

“I would have grabbed you some snacks, too,” said Caduceus, examining the makeshift picnic critically. “But I didn’t really like anything there. Wasn’t sure if you would, either. Honestly, I didn’t have anything to eat all night and I’m kinda hungry. Was thinking I’d ask the kitchen if they’d let me whip up some omelettes. Anyone want one?”

Fjord, Jester, and Beau’s hands immediately shot up. Molly, however, waved the offer away. “I kept some food with me on watch, I’ll be fine. You all have fun.”

“Are you sure, Molly?” Jester asked, sidling close to him. “We didn’t get to see you all night!”

He leaned over to kiss her cheek and stubbornly ignored the petty, childish, sour twist in the pit of his stomach. He didn’t want to deal with it, and certainly none of them deserved to. “And you’ll have plenty of time to see me tomorrow. Go on, have your breakfast for dinner. I’ll probably turn in early, honestly.”

He sounded certain enough and they were certainly tired enough that he didn’t have to argue the point too much. One by one, his friends stood up, stretched, and headed for the door out of the room. As they opened it, they very nearly collided with Caleb and Nott coming the other way. There was a brief tangle of limbs and stammered apologies and someone got their foot stepped on. Molly only just bit back a laugh at the sight.

Nott, of course, recovered first, and the first thing she did upon recovering her wits was hold up a bulging pouch in both hands. “We got _paid!_ ” she crowed, and gave everyone a minute to express their appreciation for that fact before she properly took in the scene. “What’s happening? Where are we going now? Are we on the run?”

“Just on the run to the kitchen,” Beau said. “Caduceus was gonna make us some real food. You guys wanna come?”

“Absolutely!” Nott answered, immediately shuffling into place behind the firbolg and clearly ready to follow.

Caleb, however, merely sidled into the room and motioned for them all to go ahead. “Nothing for me, _danke_ ,” he said, fiddling with the end of his scarf. “I had something to discuss with Mollymauk, actually, and we can get that out of the way while you all have your food.”

“What are you guys going to talk about, Caleb?” Jester asked, tilting her head to regard him intently. “Is it a secret? Is it a _bad_ secret?”

Caleb’s expression remained stoic, betraying only the faintest twinges of anxiety. “Ah, perhaps. I don’t know. It isn’t giving off any school of magic I’m familiar with, so I thought Mollymauk might be able to do his meditating trick, and maybe he could tell us more.”

“You cool with that, Molly?” asked Fjord, glancing back at where Molly was still sitting on the floor and watching them all.

“This has been one of the most boring nights of my short life, so yes, I’m quite fine with that,” Molly said. “Show me what you have to show me and I’ll tell you if it’s been up to any bad business.”

Caleb nodded, smiled gratefully, and together they waited for the rest of the Nein to file out of the room. After he closed the door behind them, he quickly came to sit across from Molly on the floor, and rummaged in a few of his coat’s many pockets to start pulling out yet more wrapped bundles of snacks. “I didn’t know they would also be sneaking food,” he said. “I mean, I should have guessed. Everything there was so light and small, so really, it would have taken all three of us to make a proper meal out of all these little bits.”

Molly found that he could only stare at his boyfriend for a long moment, bemused and entirely caught off guard. Finally, he cut off Caleb’s babbling as gently as he could. “Darling, what did you have to show me?”

“Mm? Oh.” Caleb ducked his head in a vain attempt to hide the blush suddenly lighting his cheeks. “That was a lie. I thought you could tell. Sorry.”

“I’ve honestly been a bit distracted all night.” Which probably wasn’t a great thing to admit when, technically, he’d been tasked with staying on alert in case of an emergency, but an emergency had never happened. “I thought everything was fine and sorted? Why the secrecy?”

“No reason in particular,” Caleb said, still fussing very intently with his additions to the makeshift picnic. “It just seemed as good a way as any to be alone with you for a little while.” The smile he darted up at Molly was shy and warm and, especially after such a lonely night, it made Molly’s heart do a pleasant little flip in his chest. It was one of his favorite of Caleb’s smiles, an expression that invited Molly in to share a secret or some intimately private joke.

Some of the discomfited feelings wrapped tight around his heart eased at the sight of that smile. Molly reached out to take Caleb’s hand in one of his, threading their fingers together. “You’re sweet. But I’m all right, Caleb, honestly. Everyone’s been very quick to tell me that I wasn’t missing much.”

“And you weren’t,” Caleb said, squeezing their joined hands. “But I know how you feel about new experiences, Molly. I know they are, um, important to you, even the less-exciting ones. And I’m sorry you had to miss out.”

It was a real and true relief, the first he’d known all night, to realize that someone else understood without Molly having to open himself up and explain as much. Maybe that shouldn’t have been such a surprise to realize, but it had been a strange night all around and even navigating a romantic relationship was still fairly new to him. So this time, it was Molly’s turn to duck his head, scratching anxiously at one horn. “Oh, fine, maybe it was a _little_ disappointing. But I get it. We had a job to do and we did it.”

“And you were ready to set your own feelings aside and help if we needed you.” Caleb lifted Molly’s hand to his mouth to kiss the back of it. “That is important, and we all appreciate it. But now the job is done, and—”

“Are you going to sneak me back into that house so I can see what I missed, then?”

He meant it as a joke, a patently ridiculous idea to break the strange tension and get rid of that serious look in Caleb’s eyes. But Caleb didn’t seem to see it as a joke. He simply stared at the delicate little assortment of food spread out on the floor, apparently genuinely embarrassed.

“I’m not that good yet,” he said. “But, I can try something…well. Something close.” Almost fussily, Caleb set Molly’s hand back in his lap and gave it a little pat. “Close your eyes for me, _schatz?_ That might make this go a little easier. And…try to keep an open mind? For me.”

Thoroughly curious, now, so much so that the party nearly slipped his mind entirely, Molly obediently closed his eyes. He heard Caleb chuckle softly, felt a kiss pressed to his forehead. _“Nicht spicken,”_ he chided, which to Molly’s burgeoning understanding of Zemnian meant _no peeking_. Molly let out a huff at the very idea, the very-not-inaccurate idea that he would have to be reminded, then obligingly covered his closed eyes with his hands to put Caleb’s fears to rest.

 _“Guter Junge_ ,” Caleb said, low and fond, and Molly felt a hand pat him on the head right between his horns. _Good boy_. That made his heart do a few dizzying acrobatics again – he wasn’t sure he would ever tire of hearing endearments in Caleb’s native tongue, always sounding so pleasantly burred in his more pronounced accent.

Then he heard Caleb get up, heard him move to the door and lock it. He heard Caleb murmur a few seconds of muffled words, probably a message for Nott into his copper wire. This led Molly to wondering if Caleb planned to take his mind off a disappointing evening by taking him to bed, which would have been a more than decent consolation prize in its own right. But the pageantry around the whole situation was strange and uncharacteristic, and his suspicions were further confirmed when he heard Caleb start to murmur an incantation – a complicated one, from Molly’s limited understanding.

He felt it when the spell completed, felt a whisper of change as it passed over him and through the room. On instinct, partly born of someone else’s training, his mind immediately sought to disbelieve the changes. Then he remembered Caleb’s words, and that gentle plea to “keep an open mind” suddenly made sense.

So he carefully pushed that disbelieving voice to the back of his mind for later, to call upon if he needed it, except he knew he wouldn’t need it because Caleb was here and this was Caleb’s plan and Molly trusted him utterly. If his love wanted to show him something with illusion magic, then Molly would focus on what his senses were now telling him to be true and let himself be shown. Of course, he was obviously now in the midst of an illusion, but weren’t some of the most fun things in all the world utterly illusory? 

The floor under his hands had gone from rough wood to thick carpet and polished marble. His coat was still the same but his other clothes had changed into some silken gown. His boots went up past his knees now and were made of an impossibly fine, soft, supple leather. He smelled a tangled mix of impossibly delicate scents, food and perfume tinged with the faint smoke of candles burning. He heard the whisper of curtains close by and he also heard…music...

“All right,” Caleb said, his voice alight with barely suppressed, giddy excitement. “You can open your eyes.”

Molly didn’t hesitate a second longer to drop his hands. His eyes snapped open wide to take in the changed scene, and he found that he and Caleb were still sitting on the floor, but rather than being in their room at the inn they were sitting on a balcony overlooking a lavishly fancy ballroom. Curtains blocked their way back towards the stairs. There was ample room between the balustrades and the railing of the balcony barely came up to their waists, leaving plenty of ways to survey the hall below. Molly scrambled to his feet to do just that, bracing his hands on the railing to stare down in rapt attention at all the finely dressed figures dancing and mingling down below.

“What do you think?” Caleb asked from behind him, and it was only then that Molly realized he hadn’t even thought to pay attention to how the two of them might have changed. He looked back at the other man and immediately felt his throat go dry. Caleb had spared a bit of the illusion magic for himself, making him appear in a way that he absolutely must have calculated to distract Molly as much as possible, damn him. His hair was tied back, and he was wearing his purple, fur-lined coat over a red silk shirt that tied in the front, the ensemble completed by aggressively tailored black pants.

Caleb’s grin was outright smug as Molly looked him over once, twice, genuinely unable to tear his eyes from the human’s form for a second. But eventually, his own impatience to show off his good work won out. He cleared his throat and gestured at Molly in turn. “I hope you like the color.”

Molly stared down at himself and actually heard a choked, needy whimper escape him. Caleb had left his coat untouched by the illusion magic, bless him, but he’d granted Molly a seafoam green gown in some impossibly soft and floaty material, cut low to show off his scarred chest and a hint of the flowers inked into one shoulder. It had trailing sleeves and a skirt that swirled down to his ankles but oh, oh of course it was slit up both sides to show off black thigh-high boots with _deliciously_ severe heels.

“I need these boots,” Molly breathed, and Caleb laughed. Molly turned on the spot, admiring the way the skirt swirled in a graceful arc, admiring the way the candlelight caught on the boots' buckles and seemed to make the black leather gleam like spilled ink. “Oh these are _so_ impractical but I don’t care, I can keep them in the bag of holding, I just _need_ these boots.”

“I agree,” Caleb said. “Well, ah, we did just get paid, perhaps…arrangements might be made…” His voice trailed off in a very telling fashion. Molly actually heard him swallow; he looked back at his love to see that Caleb was now the one apparently unable to look away from him, seemingly entranced not only by the outfit but by Molly’s delight in it.

Beaming fit to burst, Molly stepped carefully around the food still laid out on the floor and went to Caleb’s side, the better to pull him into a hug and a solid kiss. It was strange, moving in boots that half his brain was telling him should turn his ankle and half was telling him were nothing more than his normal, well-worn knee-highs. It wasn’t a bad sort of strange, though. Tt was a little like being tipsy without actually having had to imbibe anything.

Caleb made a decidedly pleased sound into the kiss, wrapping one arm around Molly’s waist and furrowing the other into his hair. “I love it,” Molly whispered, when they pulled apart to breathe. “I love all of it. Oh, you’re a dear.”

This time, the flush that lit Caleb’s cheeks was a pleased one and the sparkle in his deep blue eyes spoke of pride. He kissed Molly’s cheek once more for good measure, driving the point home that they were actually of a height like this and that was an especially exciting revelation to have. “The, ah, the spell is limited in some ways,” he said, casting his gaze out over the hall. “It can normally extend to a much further range, but not when quite this much detail is involved. I had to experiment a little but, um, but I had been doing that anyway, so this was a good opportunity for us both. Just, just don’t go past the curtains. Pretend the stairs are out and we’re waiting for the others to come and rescue us, _ja_?”

“I can do that,” Molly said happily. Honestly, even if he were actually in a physical place, even if he’d been able to attend the party with no other obligations, the idea of spending it tucked away in his own little world with Caleb, free to watch and take in all the details at his own pace and spy secretly on a world so disparate from their own, was hardly a terrible one.

His agreement on this point seemed to soothe the last of Caleb's anxieties. “Good,” he said, nodding, tension visibly bleeding from his shoulders. He motioned back down at the food. “Then, then we can sit, and eat, and I can tell you all the gossip that we overheard. Does that sound good?”

Molly sat back down on one side of the picnic, smoothing out his skirts around him, admiring the phantom feeling of the cloth beneath his palms, admiring the way the cloth flowed like water over his legs to puddle onto the gleaming floor. “Sounds lovely,” he said, and leaned in to kiss Caleb’s cheek once he’d sat back down, too.

And so they passed a happy little while there on the phantom balcony, passing tidbits of stolen delicacies to one another as Caleb pointed out this nobleman with a scandalous fetish or that noblewoman who was cheating on her husband with a druid, those three servants that had a long-running feud based on a chore wheel three years old and those two knights who would soon be caught mid-fuck out on a veranda despite serving two rival barons.

It was all enormously good fun, each secret packed full of juice and nuance and no doubt carefully picked by Caleb to amuse his lover to best effect. Some of them were probably made up entirely, but what did that matter? These weren’t his people, and this wasn’t his world, much as he’d wanted to walk among them and it for an evening just for the novelty factor. In fact, most of these people were probably the sort who were at least indirectly responsible for causing  _his_ people no amount of grief in their day to day lives. This was, in fact, a room full of some of the grumpiest people in the Empire and if he, Mollymauk Tealeaf, couldn’t be physically present to pick their pockets, then at least he could pick at their dignity.

He was so lost in the gossip and the food, in the company and the beauty of them and their surroundings, that Molly didn’t realize right away that the music was different. But eventually, the change in tune caught up to him, aided by the realization that Caleb was clearly waiting for him to notice. Of course, he must have been the one responsible for changing the music in the first place, a prelude to something that was clearly weighing heavily on his mind. Molly saw him twisting and wringing a handkerchief in his lap.

So Molly tilted his head to better listen to the tune, holding up a hand to forestall Caleb’s increasingly halting attempts to continue the conversation. Beforehand, the music had been graceful and flowing, passing between instruments as easy as breathing and yet strangely ephemeral, easy to let drift through the back of your mind as you went about the business of enjoying the party. This new song had a more definite beat to it – it took him a few seconds to grasp onto it, but soon enough he was tapping it out both with a drumming of fingertips on his thigh and a steady beat of the spaded tip of his tail on the floor. One two three, one two three…

“Do you know how to waltz, Mollymauk?” Caleb asked, apparently unable to hold the question back a second longer.

Smiling apologetically, Molly shook his head. “I quite enjoy dancing, but I’ve never really had to fuck around with any dance fancy enough to have a name.”

Caleb’s grip around the handkerchief went white-knuckled. Molly saw him take a deep breath. “W-would you, ah, would you want to learn?”

The only thing that kept Molly from bursting out laughing was that it would have been a very cruel thing to do when Caleb was so nervous. But honestly, the fact that he’d been so anxious about asking a question with such an obvious answer was a _little_ funny. Still, he swallowed down the threat of giggles and held out a hand over the picked-clean space between them. “I would love to.”

The smile that lit Caleb’s face was more beautiful than any gown or any music. He scrambled to help Molly up, eagerness making him clumsy in an eminently adorable fashion, and Molly was happy to be helped up. “Good, good,” Caleb said, a little breathless now, as they stood together on the balcony overlooking the illusory hall. “It’s such an easy dance to learn, Molly, and you will be wonderful, I am sure of it. Here, here.” Fussily, he arranged Molly and himself so that they were standing close, hands joined and arms positioned just so. “You will get it in no time. Just, ah, just follow my lead, just for now.”

Before he could set them to moving, Molly pressed a soft kiss to Caleb’s mouth. “Always, dear,” he murmured against his lips. “Always.”

When he pulled away, he had a second to see that Caleb’s smile was as bright and brilliant as the sun. Then, apparently embarrassed once more, his gaze fell to their feet. “Now,” he said. “You just follow the beat. You hear it, yes? One, two, three, one, two, three, and we just sort of pivot around this spot here…”

And so they waltzed for a while, guided by the memory of music in a hall of magic. Past and future, worry and doubt, it all faded for a while in the light of an impossibly gentle present, as they lost themselves for a time in the simple act of moving together, in the warm closeness of each other’s bodies, in the love in one another’s eyes.

They danced until Caleb quietly advised Molly to close his eyes. Molly did so, and felt himself pulled close, felt the spell unravel around them, until they were simply left holding each other in the safety of their own world, with their own people still waiting downstairs.

And as they went down together to see if Caduceus might be willing to add another couple of omelettes to the order, Molly knew he wouldn’t have traded this for anything.


End file.
